While rumours circulate about the future of the Sunday Times, the newspaper reports on another potential sale – the magazine division of the BBC:
Radio Times and Gardeners’ World magazine could soon have new owners. The BBC is considering the sale of its magazine division, which produces 50 titles, after being ordered to curb its money-making activities.
In response, the BBC said that “no decisions have been taken about any of our businesses”.
It looks like everyone knows about as much as we do on this one – from Michael Wolff’s tweets alone. On Saturday the Vanity Fair columnist and Murdoch biographer suggested, via Twitter, that News Corp could be looking to sell the Times and the Sunday Times: “Rumor in London banking circles: Times and Sunday Times up for sale.”
Before long, @michaelwolffnyc’s short message was on the re-tweet circuit:
But if Wolff knows more detail, he’s keeping it to himself for now. Meanwhile he’s asking other journalists if they know more…
@johngapper [Financial Times columnist] Working it right now. Being characterized as “strong rumor among private equity” that Times and Sunday Times could be on block.
@janinegibson [Guardian.co.uk editor] Funny how that happens. Have you heard anything – beyond tweets?
The Sunday Times reports that Hugo Dixon is in ‘advanced talks’ to sell Breakingviews.com to Thomson Reuters – for a reported £10 million.
Dixon, former Lex editor at the Financial Times, co-founded the online financial analysis site in 1999 and could receive £2.7 million if the deal goes through. The other founder, Jonathan Ford, left in 2007 and has no remaining shares, according to the Sunday Times.
According to a FleetStreetBlues source, the Sunday Times’ recent advertisement for a news reporter for its forthcoming website received more than 1,200 applicants.
“We hope it won’t discourage the Times- uniquely among the nationals – from continuing to advertise its jobs. It probably will. Who wants to sort through a small forest of CVs?” asks FSB.
Yesterday, the Sunday Times reported that a ‘consortium of Scottish businessmen is trying to buy The Scotsman newspaper from the debt-laden Johnston Press’. It claimed:
“Martin Gilbert, the chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, has joined forces with Edinburgh financier Ben Thomson and property developer Mark Shaw to acquire the daily.
“Talks have taken place in recent weeks but the two sides are believed to be a long way apart on price. Industry sources say Johnston is holding out for about £40m for The Scotsman, which it bought from the Barclay brothers for £160m in 2005.
(…)
“Sources close to Johnston confirmed an informal approach for the division, which includes Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News, but said there were no plans for a formal sale.”
Also of note is the claim that JP is in discussions with Newsquest, publisher of rival The Herald, ‘about a joint venture to pool resources. Previous attempts to merge the titles were blocked by politicians’.
AllMediaScotland links to the claims here and Shaun Milne comments here.
Like allmediascotland, Journalism.co.uk has received this statement from Johnston Press:
“Johnston Press notes the press speculation regarding the potential disposal of the Scotsman.
“Whilst Company policy is not to comment on such speculation, Johnston Press can confirm that the board does not have any disposal process underway in this regard.”
The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has today brought out its revised figures for national newspaper circulation in the UK, reducing the headline circulations of titles including the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Financial Times in the light of an investigation into ‘bulk copies’ distributed by Dawson Media Direct, for the London Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Telegraph.
The UK newspaper circulation body revised the figures because audit trails for ‘bulks’ did not comply with ABC rules.
A brief summary of today’s ABC results:
A more in-depth analysis of these results is available on Guardian.co.uk.
Guardian News and Media announced today that it will abandon the distribution of ‘bulks’.
GNM sold ‘bulk’ bundles of its papers to hotels and airlines for a nominal fee per copy to the businesses, but free to the readers. This sampling method was a way of tempting new readers towards the publications.
But bulk sales only contributed to a fraction of the Guardian and Observer’s overall sales figures compared to other newspaper groups, said a release from GNM.
“To a greater or lesser degree bulk sales are used by newspaper groups to prop up their ABC [Audit Bureau of Circulations] figure. Yet their credibility in the ad community is low and for those affected by the recent investigation into airline bulks that credibility has been undermined further,” Joe Clark, GNM director and general manager, newspapers, said in the release.
“We are abandoning this practice in order to present a clearer, more honest picture of our sales performance to advertisers and to reinforce the quality of our product to readers. The success of our subscription scheme has proved the value of rewarding loyal readers and prompted us to question the merit of subsidising a free copy for an occasional reader.
“In short dropping this traditional, and in our view, outmoded practice is a win-win move. We hope that others will follow our lead.”
On Guardian.co.uk, Roy Greenslade celebrated the decision after a 10-year battle to convince the papers to drop the bulks.
“This so-called ‘sampling exercise’ was anything other than a way to ensure that, in a declining market, headline sales figures remained artificially high,” he wrote.
Over the past 10 years publishers have become increasingly aware that sampling had little effect on their sales.
As Greenslade reports: Trinity Mirror and Express Mirrors were the first to give up the practice, while News International never used bulks for its main titles, The Sun and News of the World, but did for The Times and The Sunday Times.
The Financial Times has also begun to lessen its use of bulks; whereas The Telegraph Media Group continues to use bulks to attract new readers, he adds. In addition The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday have increased their reliance on bulks.
Liz Jones, a confessional journalist who needs little introduction, got to plug her book and share the most recent of her woes and pets in an Observer Woman feature yesterday.
Rachel Cooke, who once worked with her, took a shrewd and not exactly flattering look at Jones and the ‘Faustian pact’ the former Marie Claire editor seems to have with her personal columns (eg. an account of her single life in the Sunday Times, the ‘Wedding Planner’ series in the Guardian, and currently in the Sunday Mail.)
Confessional journalism as a trade has generated some criticism lately (Hadley Freeman here, for example; Jill Parkin here, for example); here was our latest chance to find out just why columnists do it. Cooke wrote:
“(…)The trouble is that the kind of writing she does leaves her marooned on a sad little island of self from which there is, apparently, no way back to shore. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone,” she [Jones] says. Well, why not stop, then? No one is forcing her to skin herself in public. “I could stop now, but I’ve destroyed lots of things already, so what would be the point? But if I was given the choice again, I probably wouldn’t have written about myself. It’s so difficult!” Difficult? “You have to be very brutal: you have to talk about your failings.”(…)”
In a related aside, that other doyenne of confess all to all, Tanya Gold, took part in BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions last week. Her final comment: “I despise Twitter – I would like to talk to a real person.” Funny that. Maybe the bride berated by Gold for compiling a wedding list might have liked to receive criticism in person too, rather than via Guardian.co.uk.
What do you think of female-orientated journalism in the UK? Are sections like Observer Woman and Femail necessary or relevant in 2009? Where are the best places to find representative portrayals of female subject matter? The best blogs? Or is there even such a thing as ‘female subject matter’? Journalism.co.uk is pulling together some thoughts for a forthcoming feature. Please do get in touch with yours.
Interesting poll currently running (well, at 2:54pm on July 24 at least) on Times Online asking if and how much listeners would be willing to pay to listen to its podcast The Bugle.
Of course this means nothing more than the podcast’s producer’s curiosity over whether its audience would be willing to pay. So far, 41 per cent of respondents have suggested they would pay something; though 59 per cent say they wouldn’t cough up at all.
It’s also quite refreshing to see a newspaper site ask its users outright – whether this means there are any plans to charge or not.
According to a Bloomberg report today, Jonathan Miller, chief digital officer with News Corp, whose News International arm owns the Times, has suggested the group could start charging for news and entertainment online.
Back in June, MediaGuardian reports suggested the Times’ sister title, the Sunday Times, was considering setting up a paid-for standalone webiste.
Graduates jobs have plummeted by 24.9 per cent, and of the jobs that were available 25 per cent received between 1,001 and 2,500 applications, according to a survey released by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) this week.
Nearly half of employers received more than 50 applications for every graduate job, and the fiercest competition was in banking or financial services, investment banking, retail, engineering and the industrial sector.
The number of jobs cut was far worse than anticipated by recruiters, who had predicted just a 5.4 per cent drop in a February survey by the AGR.
More employers than ever are insisting on online-only applications this year (81 per cent) and the competition seems to have brought out the best in many graduates – 40 per cent of employers reported an improvement in the quality of applications.
According to the AGR, graduate recruitment in the media industry was not covered by the survey, because it is too small.
Indeed in April we reported that the Press Association had cancelled its graduate training scheme for the year.
The Telegraph Media Group and the Guardian have both suspended their training schemes for 2009 too.
Last year Trinity Mirror, once one of biggest recruiters of trainee journalists, imposed a recruitment freeze and suspended its training scheme for its national Mirror Group titles.
Other national titles are taking on smaller numbers of trainees, including the Daily Mail, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun.
The BBC is still running its annual journalism training scheme which launched in 2007.
But it would be interesting to compare the application rates to journalism graduate schemes with other sectors.
Particularly in light of the fact that applications to journalism degree courses were up 24 per cent this year, UCAS data released in February suggested, despite a scarcity of media jobs and experienced, out-of-work journalists are ramping up the competition.
What kind of response to entry-level/graduate jobs are you getting?